Shiren the Wanderer Soundtrack (SNES)

Shiren the Wanderer Soundtrack (SNES), Koichi Sugiyama, 1995

It is slightly surprising that it took publisher Enix a full seven years to create spin-offs from its monstrously successful Dragon Quest franchise. Its first attempt to expand that universe came in 1993 with Torneko no Daibouken: Fushigi no Dungeon for the SNES. The game proved successful enough to launch a franchise of its own: Mystery Dungeon. The next entry in this burgeoning series was Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, again for the SNES. One of the system’s few roguelikes, complete with randomly generated levels and punishing difficulty, Shiren the Wanderer sold well enough to spawn yet another franchise of its own. Looking to put a more distinctive stamp on the Mystery Dungeon formula, developer Chunsoft differentiated the game from its Dragon Quest roots by setting it in a fantasy version of feudal Japan.

For the soundtrack, Chunsoft turned to a familiar name: Koichi Sugiyama, who had written the music for all of the company’s previous Dragon Quest titles and by this point was already one of game music’s most celebrated composers. While the Dragon Quest games had allowed Sugiyama to indulge his fondness for Western classical music, their pseudo-medieval fantasy settings gave him little opportunity to draw on Japanese musical traditions, apart from isolated examples such as Dragon Quest III’s “Jurong”. Shiren the Wanderer gave him the chance to remedy that, ensuring that the music matched the game’s visually distinct identity.

On album, the Shiren the Wanderer soundtrack took a somewhat circuitous route. A release containing synth arrangements and a single live orchestral medley of the SNES compositions appeared on 20 December 1995, one day before Sugiyama’s Dragon Quest VI album with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The music was later reused for the Game Boy title Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer GB and the Nintendo 64’s Shiren the Wanderer 2. Those two scores were eventually included on a 20th-anniversary album released by Chunsoft, though, for some reason, the SNES original itself was not.

Interestingly, the SNES original remains the strongest version of this soundtrack across platforms. The N64 adaptation adds a raft of new material of variable quality, while its samples are less vibrant than those of the SNES. The Game Boy score handles the more lushly arranged pieces reasonably well, but predictably struggles to replicate solo instruments such as the shakuhachi with any real conviction. As for the 2008 Nintendo DS remake, its sample quality is more underwhelming still, sounding even less lifelike than the N64 version.

And this is exactly the sort of score that depends on the authenticity of its samples. Unsurprisingly, given the setting, Sugiyama relies heavily on traditional Japanese solo instruments such as shakuhachi and shamisen to carry much of the melodic material on the Shiren the Wanderer soundtrack. When a Western instrument takes the lead, it is usually chosen for its ability to match those earthy, intimate timbres, as with the harmonica on “Summit Town” or the flute on “The Valley Campsite”. In most cases, Sugiyama places these solo lines within delicate orchestrations rooted in Western classical writing. The result is a palette of colourful, emotionally rich sonorities shaped by his harmonic and instrumental subtlety. It also helps that this score finds Sugiyama at the height of his melodic powers. Many cues run for more than four minutes in looped form, unfolding their instantly captivating melodies with patience and assurance.

What is particularly striking about the Shiren the Wanderer soundtrack is the way it creates a highly original and enthralling sound world entirely in service of the game’s aesthetic. Sugiyama draws on the timbres of his solo instruments to evoke a mood that is both down-to-earth and spiritual, as though these sounds had travelled across great depths of time. Take “Crooked Boulder Valley Kigan”, where he sustains interest through an extended shakuhachi solo alone, its jagged, non-melodic progression, at least to Western ears, proving more than enough. As in Stéphane Picq and Pierre Estève’s Atlantis: The Lost Tales, a single instrument is sufficient to conjure an ancient culture’s wisdom and tradition. The tension between earthly and otherworldly concerns, really two sides of the same coin here, is articulated more explicitly in “Summit Town” and “The Valley Campsite”, where rustic openings lead into star-gazing yet still homely B sections enriched by unexpectedly chromatic string harmonies.

Even more impressive is the way Sugiyama unifies not only Eastern and Western styles, or earth and heaven, but several other tonal contrasts besides. His town themes are predictably idyllic, yet still immensely imaginative. Take “Bamboo Forest Village Tabigara”, where chromatic, almost ostinato-like woodwind chords beneath the shamisen lead lend the music a subtly haunting, ritualistic, almost religious character. More original still are Sugiyama’s dungeon tracks. There is a wealth of highlights here, from the unexpectedly majestic string writing of “Neburi Mine”, to the unpredictably unfolding shakuhachi solo of “Trial Caves”, which leaves the destination of this journey into darkness uncertain, to “Mountain Spirit Cave”, with its intriguingly agitated temperament and skittish alternation between Eastern and Western melody leads. And one should not overlook the fact that Sugiyama somehow makes the inclusion of electric guitar on “Monster House” and “Mountain Spirit Cave 2” sound entirely natural.

Part of what makes the Shiren the Wanderer soundtrack such a coherent listening experience is Sugiyama’s clever handling of a single principal theme. The SNES period saw his interest in thematic integration reaching a peak. Dragon Quest VI is easily his most tightly structured score in that series, while Torneko no Daibouken: Fushigi no Dungeon bases almost every composition on a single theme. That earlier score’s weakness, however, was that it offered comparatively little worthwhile melodic material beyond that one idea.

Sugiyama avoids repeating that mistake here, writing several secondary motifs and fresh melodies for most of the tracks. Although he deploys his easily recognisable main theme, ceremonial yet homespun, throughout much of the score, he presents it in an impressive variety of guises. Most commonly, listeners encounter it in its solo shakuhachi form, but it also appears on acoustic guitar in “Pet”, twisted and stretched in “Legend”, on eerie strings in “Thief”, on harmonised glockenspiel in “Labyrinth”, and even through the stuttering funk syncopations of “Monster House” or on electric guitar in “Mountain Spirit Cave 2”. It is a masterful display of compositional control, and yet another reason to regard the Shiren the Wanderer soundtrack as Sugiyama’s finest work outside the Dragon Quest franchise, as well as one of the very best RPG scores on the SNES.